


Memories Like Snapshots

by hufflepirate



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: (kind of), Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Childhood Friends, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Kid Fic, Post Episode 1x10 Progeny, Pre-Series, memory recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6519025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gideon watches Mick's dreams and helps him put the pieces of his memory back together after what the Time Masters did to him at the Vanishing Point.  There are still gaps to be filled, but he's got enough put back together to know how to start fixing things with Len, or at least how to start.  The key is Lisa.  The key has always been Lisa.</p><p>Flashbacks are partially about Len and Mick's friendship, but mostly about Mick's occasional-to-semi-regular involvement in Lisa's childhood.</p><p>Spoilers for LoT through episode 1x10, Progeny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories Like Snapshots

Mick couldn't remember things. Not the way he was supposed to. Not the way he used to. Not anymore. The Time Masters had been too much in his head, tearing things up and moving them around and making him angrier.

They had left him nothing but rage, but it wasn't the kind like fire, burning things away to their essential ash, to what mattered. It was the kind like a tornado, ripping everything apart and revealing nothing so much as the fact that some things - some people - were even more destructive than he was.

"Your dreams last night were more memories," Gideon said helpfully. She wasn't always much good at fixing things - Len's face still looked like ground beef and it had been days now since he'd pounded it into the ground - but she was surprisingly nice for a robot, or at least, she was nicer than the robots he'd known before.

Except, of course, he'd actually known Gideon before any of the Time Masters' more sinister machines. He had to remember that.

Putting things he knew in the right sequence was hard, these days. Remembering them at all was hard. And figuring out what they meant without any of that was pretty much impossible.

"Forgot before I woke up," Mick grunted.

"That seems to be a symptom of the Time Masters' recalibration program. You report having forgotten your dreams more regularly than average."

"Yeah, maybe."

"You also have very _short_ dreams," Gideon continued, rambling like she always did when he got overwhelmed with things and came to sit in the med bay like he was sick. Gideon was always good with the sick. He didn't know if he was sick or not. "And you seem to have more of them than most people. It may indicate that your brain is trying to put itself back to normal now that you've broken through some of their programming."

"Yeah," he agreed, "It's all shook up in there. Everything's in the wrong order."

"I have a suggestion," Gideon said, and if she weren't a robot, he'd have said she seemed excited, "Perhaps I should show you the memories in order. Would that help?"

"You know what order they go in?"

"Of course. I have very advanced age-calculating software, for facial recognition across the timeline. I can order the memories by your age."

Mick nodded, because he wasn't sure what words to say, but it was apparently enough for Gideon. He wasn't sure where the sudden light was coming from, projecting an image onto the blank wall beside him, but he knew the image. It was one he'd remembered already. Len, 14 years old, scrawny, brand new in juvie, getting jumped by a couple of guys with a shiv, and then there it was, the moment's expression that Mick had seen again when he was trying to kill him and couldn't do it.

A sudden wave of emotion washed over Mick as he watched himself charge forward and save big-mouthed Leonard Snart. He felt like he felt now, guilty, but underneath it he could feel the way he'd felt then, too, just a flash of it. He'd been scared.

Of course he'd been scared. But he'd been a lot of other things, too, and if he hadn't been good with feelings then, it was nothing to how bad he was with them now, post-Vanishing-Point, post-anger, feeling things besides rage for the first time he could remember. One of the things was pity, he thought. One of the things was pride. He wasn't sure who he was proud of.

He wasn't sure what else he was feeling. They were old feelings, though, instead of new ones, and he knew they were from watching the past flicker in front of him.

The next set of memories were even smaller, flashes there so briefly he almost couldn't register them until they were gone. The feeling with them was stronger, clearer. There wasn't much there to live again, but he felt himself living it, mild irritation seeping into him in a way that reminded him just how different it was from real rage.

He'd forgotten that Leonard Snart had been the biggest pain in the ass in juvie.  Mick hadn't been sure why he'd even saved him.  Every fourth thing he'd said in their first few weeks being friends had caused trouble and usually the other three things he said had been about getting out of there and getting back to his stupid toddler sister who probably didn't even know he was gone because babies were dumb. Mick remembered now. Len had been the worst.

Gideon moved on.

Lenny’s mom and sister had come to see him exactly once, but Mick wasn't sure how he could know that from just the one memory. He just knew it, because he felt the truth of it inside him somewhere. Lenny's mom and sister had come to see him exactly once.

Mick hadn't been able to hear what they were talking about from the other side of the door, but he had known from looking through the window that the kid’s mom wasn't exactly all there. (He was still not sure if she had been a drug addict or a drunk or just  _not all there_ , but he'd never asked because it seemed too awkward, and he certainly wasn't going to ask _now_ ).

He had known, even then, and knew again, that the sister, who’d been in Lenny’s arms since the second they came in the door and still hadn’t taken her arms from around his neck, was the real reason his mom came, and probably the reason Len let her in.  Lisa had cried at the top of her lungs when Lenny’s mom pulled her out of his arms and carried her away.  Mick had turned his face away. He hadn't been able to watch as the two year old went screaming and howling and wailing down the hall.

He could watch it now, and he could watch himself not watching, and he wasn't sure what that meant. But something in him had come around, then, softened up or broken or just changed, and he felt that now too, even though he didn't look away this time.

Lenny Snart had become a lot more fun when Mick started answering “I gotta get out of here and get back to Lisa” with “Don’t worry, I’ll cover you.  You’ll be out for good behavior before you know it.”  Then, the conversation had been able to move on to more interesting things, and it had, and the kid had turned out to be the best friend he'd ever had.

If Lenny hadn't been so concerned with keeping his nose clean, he’d probably have ended up running the place, but that was ok.  Mick hadn't planned to stay long enough to care if he was part of running it or not, either.

On Lisa’s 3rd birthday, Lenny had become the first kid Mick had ever known to bust himself all the way out of juvie without getting caught.  He'd also become the first guy Mick had ever heard of to break out of a place in the morning and back into the place in the afternoon.  Mick had covered for him, because Lisa would only turn 3 once.

He smiled, watching that one, watching Lenny winking at him before he left and then coming back restless and excitable and happier than Mick had ever seen him. He didn't know if this feeling was now or then or both, but whatever it was, he'd surprised himself with it. What would the others think if they found him like this, looking at projections of Lenny and smiling? Would they think he'd forgiven him? _Had_ he forgiven him?

The next memory was what he still thought of as his first _real_ crime. He'd always been the delinquent type, in for a little mostly-harmless (up to that point) arson and smashing up some asshole’s car after he took it for a joy-ride and fairly minor instances of stealing.  He’d never tried anything really big, he'd never done anything genuinely premeditated, and he’d  _definitely_ never blackmailed anyone before.

But then he'd gotten out of juvie and Lenny had been standing there, 3 weeks out himself, waiting at the gate with a folder full of dirt on the principal of some fancy preschool for Lisa and a plan that involved a little bit of good-will document burning and a little bit of muscle. Mick had been happy to provide both. The flames had been beautiful as they ate up the slick photo paper in the principal's trashcan, and he'd been so busy watching, he had almost missed it when Lenny got what he wanted.

They'd pulled their first real, proper heist, one without Snart’s dad or anyone else to answer to, at lunchtime.  It had looked over-ambitious, and that’s what Lewis Snart had called it when he beat the shit out of Lenny even though they hadn't gotten caught.  Mick had felt guilty, then, letting it happen because he was afraid Lewis would rat him out, and he felt guilty now, for that and more and for the fact that this last time he hadn't just let it happen, he'd bruised up Lenny's face himself.

He still knew what he'd known then. Nothing about that plan had been ambition. They'd had to pull it early enough to finish, get away, and let the heat die down in time to pick Lisa up from school. It had been necessity, and he hadn't even thought to doubt that they had to pick Lisa up from school, because of course they did.

Safe on the Waverider in his own old clothes, he didn't let himself think the thought his mind wanted to think next, a thought that belonged inside his Chronos suit and that he couldn't stand to think while Gideon was still playing that father-son beatdown.

Instead, he wondered if Gideon knew she was making him uncomfortable. He wondered if she cared. He wondered if it was good for him to be uncomfortable, if he had to be uncomfortable to put all these pieces back right.

The next memory was happy and he sighed in relief. Lisa had turned 5 the week before Mick turned 18. Len had been 17 and a high school dropout and Len-not-Lenny for a couple of months. With their mom gone and Lewis (blessedly) back in jail, he'd been doing all he could to keep the mortgage and utilities paid and food in Lisa's tummy, to stay ahead of child services, and to keep the bills paid for the less-fancy preschool she went to now that the principal they'd blackmailed at the first one had been fired for something else.  Their grandfather helped when he could, but he wasn't exactly rolling in cash, either, and things always came out tight.

(Mick, at that age, had mostly blown his money having fun, but it hadn't occurred to him to feel guilty back then, and he mostly didn't feel guilty about it now - keeping his kid sister fed had always been Len's problem and Mick's unexpected soft spot for Lisa didn't make feeding her his problem.)

Lisa had wanted to go to the zoo, but they'd almost gotten caught on their last job and they were in the middle of taking a break to let the heat die down.  There wasn't enough money left over to get in, so Mick had started a fistfight with a stranger in the parking lot and distracted everybody long enough for Len to sneak Lisa through the front gates.

He'd gotten away before the cops could get there and tended to his brand-new black eye, and a couple of hours later he'd gone to meet their grandfather at the Motorcar Diner. Lisa had been positively glowing, telling them all about the animals they'd seen and how other kids had ice cream but Lenny told her she couldn't have any because it would spoil her dinner with grandpa, and how the tigers got fed in front of them and they ate _just like this._  

Mick smiled at the wall, watching Lisa hold her chicken finger up in the air and snap at it like a tiger while none of them told her to mind her manners. She'd been one spoiled rotten kid, when Lewis was gone and they could manage it, which wasn't always. The thought Mick couldn't think just now hovered at the edge of his brain, and he made himself focus on the projection in front of him instead of thinking it, listening to Lisa's little-girl laugh like it could drive everything else away.

Len, light-fingered as always, had made away with a little rubber tiger for Lisa, but she'd plopped it down on Mick's knee and left it there because he helped them and he was tough like a tiger, and Mick suddenly wondered, if he went back to Central City, 2016, whether he would still be able to find it, shoved in some box somewhere because he never _could_ seem to really unpack in his life.

He probably couldn't find it. It was probably long gone. He probably hadn't kept it, or it had gotten lost one of the times he went to prison and came back out.

A couple of months later, he'd tried to pull a job Len didn't plan and he'd wound up in prison - full prison, not juvie - for the first time. He guessed he must not have dreamed about it since he got back on the Waverider, because the wall went blank for a moment, and all of a sudden Lisa was 12 and only half remembered him.

When he got out, Len had been 24 and everything about him had been more closed-off than it used to be. His jokes had been sharper and his snark had been meaner, and he'd brought Lisa with him everywhere but on jobs because Lewis Snart was home again, and Len was still stealing too much too often to risk going to court to take her away from him.

Mick remembered Lisa's tween years with surprising fondness. She'd spent half her time lounging on the ripped couch at Mick's crappy apartment, the one he'd picked up on the side of the street to put in front of the TV he'd stolen from a pawn shop that probably couldn't have sold it anyway because the picture was always a little wavy. Len liked to be able to keep an eye on her, and now that they were plotting heists together again, this was the place to do it.

She'd whined a lot, about school or teachers or other kids or how Len was always planning jobs and they still never had enough money for her to dress like the cool kids. She'd also plotted to get back at those cool kids with all the virtuosity of her older brother and an extra helping of preteen-girl viciousness, and Mick had broken down and helped her with those plans like he helped Len with the ones for the heists. He'd always been a little vicious, but he and Lisa mostly just did emotional damage.

She'd done school projects on his kitchen table because Lewis couldn't smash them that way, but that had been alright because the table was rickety and old and he sat on the couch to eat half the time anyway. It had also been alright because she'd always picked the darkest topics. Her history diorama about Custer's Last Stand had been a masterpiece of severed limbs and dying horses that he hadn't minded having around at all.  His favorite had been the science fair project where she burned yarn to see how much wool had to be in it to make it self-extinguishing.  He and Lisa had had a great time and Len had been on-edge for weeks about it, convinced they were going to burn the apartment down, or burn themselves or each other.

She'd borrowed his CDs without asking and begged to be allowed to go to the mall with her friends until Len broke down and agreed and then dragged Mick along to shadow them, and she'd constantly made fun of Mick for still eating kid cereal even though he was 25, and somehow he'd liked her anyway. At least having her around had made him feel like he was really part of the world again, really out of prison for good.

She'd even started showing up, every once in a while, when she knew Len wouldn't be there. They'd both known he wasn't going to get her in trouble for ditching school, and he'd never asked her what was going on or why she wasn't there. He'd just made her a bowl of vanilla ice cream and Lucky Charms and let her pick a CD out of his collection to blast at top volume while they played darts for a couple of hours. He usually got bored with darts, but when Lisa showed up like that, he'd play until she stopped making little angry screaming noises every time she threw one and seemed more like her old self.

When she was 13 and her boobs had come in for real and the boys started staring, he'd taught her how to throw a real punch and where to aim it to do the most damage, and he'd looked forward to watching what she did with that, little vicious Lisa as clever as Len. But a few weeks later it had all fallen apart again in a flash.

He hadn't even been mad at Len for vanishing without warning him first when the heist went south. Mick had gotten away only by the skin of his teeth, and he'd lost his mask and had to go on the run, but Len had made it out to get back to Lisa, and Mick had called his apartment on the way out of town to tell Lisa to clear out before the cops got there and to take anything she wanted out of his CD collection.

Mick got caught up in those memories while Gideon showed them to him, one right after the other, with his brain supplying new ones in the spaces between because maybe, just maybe, this was starting to work.

Gideon didn't know that and didn't stop, so the memories all piled up on top of each other and started to blend together, and it was hard to keep up. That was good, because it kept The Thought away, the one he couldn't think, not now, maybe not ever, and because it felt like progress to have things coming to him together instead of in fragmented pieces.

When he'd gotten back to town, he'd left a message for Len where he'd known his friend would find it. Len hadn't answered, and Mick had been mad about it, right up until the day Len really did call. Lisa was in the hospital, and Len sounded less in control of himself than Mick had ever heard him, even when he was 14 and terrified.

He'd gone straight to the hospital and charged into the ER to find Len sitting at her bedside looking shaken. Lisa herself had smiled up at him with a calm, "Hey, Mick, long time no see," but Mick had been fixated on the row of neat black stitches across her collarbone, framed by the wide neck of her spaghetti-strap shirt. Her fake smile hadn't been nearly enough to stem the tide of rage he felt at the thought of Lewis Snart attacking her.

He felt the rage again now, the pure kind that was like fire, that burned away everything else so that you could see clearly. He'd wanted to tear Lewis Snart limb from limb. He'd been surprised Len hadn't done it already, but then he'd noticed how tightly Len was still holding his little sister's hand, the same way she'd held onto him when she was 2 and he was in juvie, and he'd understood.  Len couldn't leave her long enough to do it, not with her in the hospital like this.

The next day, they'd started planning a way to get Lewis caught again and away for a good long time, and before Lisa's stitches were out, Lewis was back in prison for his longest stretch yet. Mick had been glad to help, even with no money involved at all. It had been worth it, getting that bastard out of Len and Lisa's lives.

He burned with the rage of it all, black stitches and dried blood and the nurse checking and double checking her for a concussion and Len's hand squeezing Lisa's 'til his knuckles went white. _I wanted to kill Lewis Snart for hurting her_ , he thought. _I would have killed him, right then, if I could have_. _I'm glad Len finally did him in._

And then came the thought again. This time he could think it, now that the the rest of the Time Masters' chaos had burned away in the fire of the new rage, the old rage, the _pure_ rage he'd just gotten back again.

_I almost killed Lisa._

Part of him didn't believe it, didn't or couldn't believe it had been any more than words. But there had been moments, with the storm inside tearing things up, when he could have done it. When he _would_ have done it, to kill Len from the inside out.  He could have done it, or he could have at least tried, and he had to face that, now.

Len would never have survived it. He knew that now, even more than he'd known it then when all the fragmented pieces of his brain threw killing Lisa up as the worst thing he could do to his old partner.

He'd told Len he was going to kill her over and over again and make him watch, but even if he'd done it, that wouldn't have been true.  If he'd killed Lisa once, there would have been nothing left of Len to watch him kill her again. Whatever it was that made Len who he was, Lisa was part of it.

But then - he'd looked at Len, lying half-crushed beneath him, and he'd seen him 14 and scared and alone. Could he really have looked Lisa in the eye and killed her? Or would he have seen her like this, still projected on the wall in front of him, still talking even though he was too much in his own head to hear her, battered and bruised and sewn-up, with Len still gripping her hand?

"Gideon, stop," he said suddenly, "I need to go talk to Len."

The image on the wall froze. "Mr. Snart is on the bridge," Gideon supplied helpfully.

He grunted in acknowledgment and left the room.

Len was sitting at the very front of the ship, looking out the window with his feet tucked uncharacteristically up underneath him. Mick didn't know what to say, but he knew that the clarity of fire didn't last, and he had to fix this before the clarity was gone.

He sat next to Len and the man turned toward him, face less swollen now and more sunken. His bruises had darkened, and his eyes seemed half-dead inside them. He'd been secluding himself away ever since Mick had spared his life, keeping apart from the rest of the team, and Mick hadn't had the clarity to think that through yet. Now he did.

Len was protecting Lisa. Again. As always. He was proving he wouldn't pick the team over Mick again, because he didn't trust him not to go after Lisa if he felt slighted.

Mick felt the rage fading out of his system, like his whole body was cooling down, but he knew how to start, and that would just have to be enough.

"She's safe, you know," he said, "I won't hurt her."

Len turned slowly back toward him, like it was an effort to look him in the eye. "And how can I know that, Mick? Because you're playing nice now? You said you'd-"

Mick interrupted him mid-drawl, hating the fact that Len was using his Cold-voice on him at all, "I know what I said. But that was before I didn't kill you." _Couldn't_ , his own mind supplied, but he couldn't quite admit that to Len, so he kept talking instead. "You were gonna die for her. But you don't have to. I'm not gonna kill her. I'm not gonna kill you. I'm gonna do - I don't know. Something else. If we don't all die anyway. The Hunters are still coming."

Len nodded. "Took you long enough," he said, a glimmer of the old Len in his eyes for a split second before he turned away again. After a moment, he added, "I'd hoped you wouldn't figure it out, though." His voice was quieter, like he wasn't sure he wanted to say it.

"Why?"

Len didn't turn to look at him, "I assumed that if you figured out why I was doing it, you would go after her first. If you thought I was playing you, you'd have gone after her before you'd have let me die to take away the point of doing it."

That was fair. Cold, yes, calculating, yes, but he'd known Len since before they were old enough to drive, and it was also fair. He didn't like to think about that too much, so he just grunted to acknowledge Len's point.

Len turned to look at him again, "I _am_ sorry, Mick," he barked out a laugh with no humor in it, "If you can believe that after I said I was playing you."

Mick grunted again, but it wasn't enough. He had to say something, or that was gonna be it and Len was still not gonna believe this thing between them was over.  He needed this thing between them to be over, because if it wasn't, the Time Master conditioning might rise back up again, and he knew now that he didn't want that.  He had to put this behind them.

"You were always playing me," he said to Len, "Dunno when it started, maybe that day I covered you for Lisa's birthday when we were still in juvie, but you were always playing me. Why didn't you bust _me_ out, huh? You'd think I'd have thought of that, but I got caught up in it all and then you were back and it was like you couldn't have made it out for good anyway, but why didn't you bust me out?"

Len looked him in the eye, "I'd have gotten in trouble, Mick. They'd have kept me away from Lisa while my father was home, and you know I couldn't allow that."

"And if I'd gotten in trouble, covering for you?"

"Didn't matter. Maybe it still doesn't. But I'd have been sorry then, too. I did _like_ you Mick, it was just-"

"It's Lisa," they finished together.

"I know," Mick answered, "But that's what gets me. This last time, after the pirates, that had nothing to do with Lisa. 'S the first time you ever left me behind and it wasn't about Lisa."

Len was still looking him in the eyes, and something about that look was desperate, "But I was coming _back_ , Mick. You know that. I was coming back. I always come back."

"You always come back for _Lisa_. You didn't come back for me."

"No," Len said stubbornly, "I _was_ coming back, Mick.  And it _was_ about Lisa.  If I'd thought you'd be safe around her, I'd have sent you home.  But I couldn't.  And I was right, wasn't I?  I was right, and I'm _still_ sorry, so can you please get your head out of your ass and quit pretending this is all on me?"  The drawl was gone, long gone, and Len was just Len again, like he was before they got the guns, when it was just the two of them pulling heists and getting away from the law.

Mick didn't know how to answer that.  He made a noncommittal noise, trying to buy himself time, and suddenly, Lenny snapped like he hadn't since that first stint in juvie, and Mick just had to sit back and stare at him.

Len leapt to his feet, beckoning him forward, "You know what?  You wanna hit me again to prove I'm telling the truth? Do it. I'm healing up again. I can take it. You can probably get a few punches in before you knock me out. Take it out on me, that's fine.  I'm sorry it turned out so messed up, but I was coming back, and if it saved Lisa, I'd do it again."

Mick tried not to smile. He tried to see grown-up Len instead the melodramatic 14-year-old he'd saved all the way back then, because they were adults now, after all. Only maybe they weren't, because maybe this thing between them, this whatever-it-was that was more than a fight, only got fixed if they went backward in time far enough to be something else, to build it all back up again.  "You're gonna let me punch you again.  Face like that, and you're just gonna stand there and take it."

"Sure, Mick. Why not? What've I got left to lose? All these years, and you were just gonna turn on my baby sister - my _baby sister_ , Mick. There's nothing left you could possibly do to me that's worse than that except actually go through with it, and we both know I'll die first. I'll shoot myself. Again. Hit me."

That was it. That explained it. The dying embers of the old rage, cooling down because he couldn't feel that way about Lenny anymore, gave him one last final flash of clarity. Len had been on the razor's edge for weeks now. He'd been on the razor's edge about Lisa, the one person who mattered most to him, and Mick had put him there. Maybe the Time Masters had gotten what they wanted after all, only they'd expected Mick's revenge to go differently, expected 'torture your old friend' to look different than this. But that didn't matter now. Mick  _understood_. Anyone else who'd put Len in this position would be dead now. But he wasn't.  And he wouldn't be.

"I'm not gonna hit you."

"Why not, Mick? You lose your taste for it?"

"Yeah, sure," he answered, leaning backward with his hands behind his head, "It's not as much fun now that I've got my memories back in order. Keep thinking about that stupid plastic tiger you stole Lisa from the zoo."

"Tiger?" Len asked, wind suddenly going out of his sails, like he hadn't realized until right now that Mick really had changed his mind and he hadn't prepared a response to it.

"When she turned 5, remember? You couldn't afford to take her, so I picked a fight in the parking lot and you two just waltzed right in while everybody was out trying to stop me beating that guy up. He got in a couple of good punches, though."

"You remember that?"  Len was calming down now, sounding more like himself. It was good. Reassuring. Maybe they were both about to be on solid ground again, after everything.

"'Course I do. She's practically my sister, too."

"Yeah, and you were gonna-"

"I never could have, Lenny," he answered, and it was the truth. Whatever else he'd been as Chronos, it was probably still the truth. "I coulda convinced you I had, coulda made you believe it, coulda watched you think it was true and probably liked it, but I never coulda looked her in the eye and done it. I think you made me soft, raising that dumb toddler in front of me all those years."

He wasn't sure how he felt about admitting that he could have watched Len hurt that bad and liked it, but Len had already told him he'd do all this over again if he had to, so Mick figured the truth was as good as anything.

"Yeah, well," Len said, finally, maybe, almost believing him. "She did turn out pretty well, in the end. So I guess that's what counts."  It had been years since Lenny had lost his cool like that, and now that he was quieter again, he sounded exhausted. Mick sort of understood that. Len wouldn't be himself again until he could get back to his icy, rational calm, and that was gonna take some time right now.

Mick grunted in agreement.

"And anyway, it's Len now. You know that. 'Lenny' was 15 and an idiot." Len sat back down, not back where he'd been, but farther away, several feet farther down the window, like he still couldn't be too close to Mick.  But sitting down was a start.

"Fourteen," Mick corrected, "And you're still an idiot. Shoulda known it was me. Shoulda known I'd never really hurt her."

"Yeah, maybe. But I didn't."

"Don't think I did, either." Mick said it, but the minute he had, he knew it was too much. This whole conversation had been too much, but they'd had to have it. Now they had, and he could stop.  Go back to the way things used to be.  Or pretend to until things really did come around alright again.

The silence stretched between them for a moment that went on too long, and then Mick stood abruptly, deciding to leave it all alone for now.

As he walked out the door, he found one more thing to say, so he turned around and said it. "Vanilla ice cream and Lucky Charms. Pretty sure they're both in the kitchen here. Used to calm Lisa down when she was ditching school. You oughta try it. And you can hold the bowl against your face."

His last glance over his shoulder wasn't long enough to read Len's expression, but he thought things were gonna be alright anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> This started life as a headcanon set, but when I realized it was gonna be obscenely long for that, I added a frame narrative and changed some verb tenses. I like how it came out, though. Originally, I thought of ordering the memories as like having a bunch of photos and trying to put them in a photo album, so that's where the title came from. But how I'm tempted to think of them as crime scene photos, too, or both at the same time.
> 
> Also: Sometimes with stuff like this that has little stories embedded in it, I get comments asking me to write those stories in full. I don't really have time to do that, but if you want to, you're welcome to write it yourself. Just send me a link or something so I can read it. ^_^

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Vengeance is like fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7973905) by [Thei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thei/pseuds/Thei)




End file.
